30th May, 2012

Rio+20: High school students plan to re-build New Zealand’s crumbling clean, green reputation with actions, not words

Four young New Zealanders are travelling to the worlds largest ever UN convention, Rio+20, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next month to rebuild New Zealand’s crumbling clean, green reputation. Not with words, with actions.

Rocked by powerful evidence from recent reports that New Zealand is losing its clean and green reputation, worth billions of dollars in tourism and export revenue, the group of high schoolstudents have decided to use the UN conference on Sustainable Development as a staging point, to showcase the many positive sustainability initiatives happening in New Zealand.

A spokesperson for the New Zealand youth delegation to Rio+20, Ben Dowdle (17) from Pakuranga College, says “We want to contribute to the Rio+20 summit by showing examples of successful sustainability projects that we’re involved in our local communities in New Zealand. We want to learn from other countries and get New Zealand back on track to becoming a world-leader in sustainability”.

Recent reports from WWF and The Global footprint Network highlight that New Zealand has a poor record in meeting its commitments made at the original Rio Earth Summit conference in 1992, and that the country is rapidly consuming its Bio-Capacity with an ever increasing ecological footprint – the measure used to determine the sustainability of a country based on its current population, consumption patterns and available land resources.

The four youth ambassadors in the New Zealand delegation to Rio+20 are:
• Andre Morrison (Western Heights High School), Rotorua
• Erin Hickey (whakatane high School), Whakatane
• Ben Dowdle (Pakuranga College), Auckland
• Injy Johnstone (Kaikorai Valley College), Dunedin

Each youth ambassador is currently personally fundraising for their travel costs and they are looking to sustainability-focussed businesses and organisations for funding.

The official Rio+20 youth conference takes place in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on June 10-12. The main conference takes place June 20-22.

www.facebook.com/NZYouthRioPlus20

ENDS

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